Wednesday, June 29, 2022 — 7
Sports
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Absence of female athletic
directors in the NCAA stands out
TAYLOR DANIELS
Daily Sports Writer
The concept of women in sports
often centers around the idea of
female athletes. But there are so
many roles beyond athletes that are
crucial to the functioning of a team
behind the scenes. For every school
and for every sport, the athletic
director is a role that is vital to the
success of each team.
And while there are roughly the
same number of men’s and women’s
sports programs at each school — for
example 13 men’s and 14 women’s
teams at Michigan — there are
significantly fewer female athletic
directors in that front office position
across the NCAA.
That problem is not new — it has a
long history.
Before the NCAA took over the
governing
of
women’s
athletics
prior to the 1982-83 school year,
the Association for Intercollegiate
Athletics for Women (AIAW) served
that role. And in the AIAW, many
leadership positions were held by
women.
But after the NCAA — which
actively fought against Title IX and
the AIAW — took over due to its
larger budget and more widespread
marketing, many of those roles
disappeared as the AIAW folded.
In 1973, 95% of women’s athletic
programs were women-led, but in
1985 — three years after the NCAA
replaced the AIAW — that number
dropped to 14%, and that same year,
38% of programs did not have a single
female administrator. Many women
who
previously
held
leadership
positions in the AIAW were demoted
when their institutions joined the
NCAA. Liz Murphey, a former
women’s athletic director at Georgia
under the AIAW, was demoted to
assistant athletic director after the
switch to the NCAA. Murphey is
just one example of how women in
leadership positions were treated
after the NCAA took over.
But
female
athletic
directors
didn’t go away quietly. The Council
of
Collegiate
Women
Athletic
Administrators — now known as
Women Leaders in College Sports
— was founded in 1979 by a group of
female athletic administrators. The
organization aims to develop female
leadership, advance women in their
careers and create a community of
women working in sports.
Its current CEO, Patti Phillips,
wrote that “cultural and societal
bias drives much of the inequity in
college athletics … gender inequality
in the world of sports has existed for
decades, and a major contributor can
be explained in one word: football.”
Chief among those influences,
football — almost exclusively a men’s
sport — is the main revenue source
for many colleges, especially in
Power Five conferences. Accordingly,
gender bias when it comes to hiring
an athletic director — who oversees
football — prevails.
According to a 2019 research
report from the Michigan Task Force
on Women in Sports, both women
and men perceive gender bias in
the hiring practices and workplace
culture of sports leadership at the
college level. Women experience
gender inequity amid a deeply
ingrained male-dominated culture.
In sports leadership, women must
work both within and against that
culture to succeed.
“I think the perception is (that)
opportunities are there and processes
are fair and equal, but they aren’t
truly whether it be budgets, salaries,
promotions, or how women leaders
are viewed and evaluated by peers
and administrators,” a respondent
to the Women’s Sports Foundation’s
Female Leaders in Sport Survey in
2019 said.
The report also found that the lack
of access to mentors was the greatest
hindrance to the development of
women leaders. While the number
of women in high-level positions has
increased in recent years — this week,
for example, Nevada hired Stephanie
Rempe as its next athletic director —
the inequity remains glaring.
In the 2020-2021 academic year,
only 24% of athletic directors in the
NCAA were women — and just 14%
in Division 1. And the University of
Michigan, which has never had a
female athletic director since the
position’s creation in 1898, exemplifies
that disparity. The Wolverines aren’t
alone in that regard, and there are
currently no female athletic directors
in the Big Ten.
The absence of women leading
NCAA front offices highlights the
need for increased female mentorship
in the sport industry.
In her USA Today op-ed, Phillips
proposed keys to evening out that
disparity. Those include creating
diversity commitments, encouraging
university academic leaders to join
in finding a solution and speaking
directly to men about sports gender
inequity.
Currently,
opportunities
exist
for women as athletes, coaches,
administrators, general managers
and broadcasters that would not
have been possible prior to Title IX.
But there is still a long way to go, and
change begins at the top.
“It’s on us as female coaches to keep
pushing. It’s on athletic departments
to keep hiring strong females and
females in administration to bring to
light just what we have to go through
as
female
athletes,”
Michigan
women’s lacrosse coach Hannah
Nielsen said in a video about Title IX.
Fifty years after Title IX passed
into law, change still needs to occur
in hiring female athletic directors.
Doing so could be key to expanding
gender equity in sports beyond the
law’s current progress.
50 YEARS OF TITLE IX
EMMA MATI, KATE HUA, JULIA
SCHACHINGER, JULIANNE YOON/Daily